The union representing 30,000 indoor workers at the City of Toronto is moving one step closer to a possible strike.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 79 (CUPE79) announced Friday morning it is seeking a no-board report from the Ministry of Labour.
The report signals that negotiations between both parties, CUPE79 and the City of Toronto, are at an impasse.
If the no-board report is granted by the ministry, a 17-day countdown will commence, after which the union could call a strike or the city could issue a lockout.
“The city has pushed negotiations to the brink,” CUPE79 president Nas Yadollahi said at a press conference Friday morning.
“We are now forced to prepare for the possibility of job action to win the investment in services that our members and Toronto residents deserve. This is not a decision we take lightly,” she said.
Last month, over 90 per cent of CUPE79 workers voted in favour of a strike mandate.
CUPE79 has been at the bargaining table with the city since late November 2024. The union’s contract expired at the end of 2024.
How would Torontonians be impacted?
If CUPE79 members strike or are locked out, repercussions would be felt across the city.
The union’s members work in areas like public health, ambulance dispatch, shelter services, water and food inspection, childcare and long-term care, among other services.
“Local 79 members are the ones who ensure that your drinking water is clean,” the union president said. “Daycares will be closed, shelters will be impacted [and] community centres will be shut down."
City manager Paul Johnson told reporters in a press conference Friday afternoon that “Torontonians will be impacted” if a strike or lockout occurs, but the city has contingency plans in place to minimize the disruption.
Critical services like water are a top priority in those plans.
“No resident or business owner has to worry one second about Toronto water. We will have safe drinking water provided,” Johnson said. “Torontonians can rest assured that those critical services will be in place.”
Johnson did not directly answer a question about what the city has planned for city-run camps and childcare centres in case a job action occurs during the March school break.
“Torontonians can be assured that we will be communicating that as we get closer,” he said. “Today is not the time to be talking about that until we're much closer to that time frame.”
Johnson stressed that the city and CUPE79 are still "a long way” from a potential job action, and that both parties have committed to continue negotiating throughout the 17-day period.
CUPE79’s demands
Better pay is what the union is after, Yadollahi said, noting many city workers make minimum wage and lack benefits.
The union also pointed to a crisis in staffing across city positions.
Job vacancies for city employees have risen by 65 per cent since the COVID-19 pandemic, with 1,400 positions currently unfilled, according to CUPE79.
The staffing crisis is most acute in long-term care facilities, where there are over 500 job vacancies across Toronto, representing a 700 per cent increase since the COVID-19 pandemic.
"City workers have had enough,” Yadollahi said. “After years of being overworked, understaffed and underpaid, we refuse to accept a deal that keeps us falling further behind. We are prepared to stand up for what we deserve and we won’t back down."
CUPE416 contract pegged at $57 million
In December, the city reached a new agreement with CUPE Local 416, which represents the city’s outside workers, including garbage collectors and parks staff. CUPE416 members will see wage increases of between 3 and 3.95 per cent year-over-year.
After staying mum for over a month on how much the agreement will cost, the city revealed the contract added an extra $57.2 million over four years to the city’s expenses in response to a question from TorontoToday during Johnson’s press conference.
The city offered CUPE79 the same wage increases it successfully negotiated with CUPE416, according to a bargaining update posted Thursday. The city noted both unions’ members are “all part of the same labour environment” and have “received the same general wage increases” for the last 25 years.
Yadollahi pushed back on that characterization and said CUPE79 represents an “entirely different workforce.”
“While that deal may have been appropriate for [CUPE416], it is not going to be something that we can accept,” she said.
On top of the proposed 3 and 3.95 per cent year-over-year wage increases, the city said it has “offered to discuss” special wage increases for nurses and municipal standards officers to bring their pay up to market levels.
In addition, the city said it tabled a proposal to ensure 92 per cent of all part-time hours for recreation workers will be paid above minimum wage, up from 43 per cent of all hours from last year.
Wages for recreation workers has been a particular sticking point for CUPE79.
A part-time recreation worker told reporters during a CUPE79 press conference in late January that he and many of his colleagues are “one missed paycheck away from extreme stress.”
The worker, Mekhi McKenzie-Jones, said he recently had to move to Pickering because he can’t afford to live in Toronto. Under his current contract, McKenzie-Jones said he’s making minimum wage and doesn’t have access to benefits like sick leave or vacation time.
